Science on Screen: Particle Fever with Semir Zeki

The second Science on Screen of the third series was presented by Semir Zeki (Professor of Neuroesthetics at UCL), who chose Dir Mark Levinson’s Particle Fever. Semir described how brain scans are now beginning to reveal centres of the brain associated with the aesthetic experience of beauty. Such responses are not only elicited by art and music, but by mathematics too. In Particle Fever, physicists likewise appear to describe their search for the Higgs boson in aesthetic terms. Semir suggests that theories that are apprehended ahead of their discoveries are guided by beauty. This conforms to the classical idea that beauty and truth are intimately related.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *